Just an everyday story of pots? Thinking through the controversies, materialities and interdependencies of initial pottery and organic containers in the East Mediterranean.

This paper addresses ongoing controversies in the evidence for initial pottery in the East Mediterranean and explores new lines of approach that might bring their resolution. It suggests that our ability to answer why pottery was first made and used is still hindered by expectations regarding what early pottery should be, and by a form of material perspectivism that brings pottery into sharp focus and leaves its organic container context out of view. The paper argues that early pottery is not fully intelligible when understood in isolation from this organic container context and questions the default view of early pottery as an ‘advance’ and as offering superiority over existing organic containers. In developing this view, the paper explores controversies thrown up by study of the early pottery from Knossos (Crete) and how their resolution forced, not only a radical re-evaluation of assumptions, but also a transformation of approach, from one centred on pottery, to one focused on containers where pottery is de-centred. The paper concludes by exploring whether insights and explanations from Knossos, regarding pottery’s ancillary nature, its dependent relations on a larger universe of containers in everyday use and the nature of its adoption (exogenous technology/indigenous typology [ET/IT] model), have a wider relevance to our understanding of the nature, adoption and use of initial pottery in southwest Asia.